Archive for January 9, 2010

It looks like Raw Thrills/Betson is really beginning to make a push into the Japanese arcade market. First we heard of them testing H2Overdrive in the region, then Chicago Coin/Betson’s PUTT: Champion Golf was seen over there and now we have news of Terminator Salvation currently being tested at the “Shop Yokohama Nishiguchi Raundowan”. What would be even more interesting is to find out how well these games are selling as well as earning on location and whether they have full Japanese translations or not. Speaking of that, if any arcade developer out there ever wishes to break into the Brazilian coin-op market, I would happily do the Portuguese translation of any game for a reasonable fee. I’m just saying. ;)

UPDATE: Thanks to arcades4ever in the comments, we now know that it’s testing at the Hollywood Bowl Bowling Alley in the UK as well. As always, if anyone ever has a chance to snap some pics from a location test, send them to us so we can share with everyone (we’ll give you credit too). ;)

The battle of the sit-down turret light-gun games might be heating up a little more as Siliconera is reporting that Sega has trademarked the name Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics in Europe. Whether this is an arcade title or a console title is unknown at the moment – it isn’t often that we learn about new arcade titles via trademarks although it can happen on a rare occasion. A sequel to LGJ in arcades would make sense, especially with Namco prepping their new sit-down shooter Dead Storm Pirates for release in Q2 of this year. Other than that all we can do is speculate about this until Sega reveals more – if it is an arcade title then I imagine that this will take advantage of one of Sega’s new hardware platforms (Ringedge/Ringwide or if it’s being developed by Sega Europe, perhaps Europa-R could another title beyond SR3?) where it could be a good showcase title for either piece of hardware. Or perhaps it could be an upgrade kit for existing LGJ machines. Hopefully, we will hear more soon.

UPDATE: If you read our comments then you will find out that this is an arcade title(thanks Kevin Williams for that confirmation), not a console port so anyone with a hope for that can throw that out the window for now. Hopefully we will be finding out more soon at one of the upcoming European trade shows.

The battle of the sit-down turret light-gun games might be heating up a little more as Siliconera is reporting that Sega has trademarked the name Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics in Europe. Whether this is an arcade title or a console title is unknown at the moment – it isn’t often that we learn about new arcade titles via trademarks although it can happen on a rare occasion. A sequel to LGJ in arcades would make sense, especially with Namco prepping their new sit-down shooter Dead Storm Pirates for release in Q2 of this year. Other than that all we can do is speculate about this until Sega reveals more – if it is an arcade title then I imagine that this will take advantage of one of Sega’s new hardware platforms (Ringedge/Ringwide or if it’s being developed by Sega Europe, perhaps Europa-R could another title beyond SR3?) where it could be a good showcase title for either piece of hardware. Or perhaps it could be an upgrade kit for existing LGJ machines. Hopefully, we will hear more soon.

UPDATE: If you read our comments then you will find out that this is an arcade title(thanks Kevin Williams for that confirmation), not a console port so anyone with a hope for that can throw that out the window for now. Hopefully we will be finding out more soon at one of the upcoming European trade shows.

Arcade machines aren’t just for arcade venues – they can be great for offices too. The people at MTV Multiplayer certainly think so and they not only have a Big Buck Safari onsite, they have an ongoing celebrity tournament running on the machine where they invite the celebrities that they interview to compete for the highest score. This of course offers some fun for the people who come in for interviews and it also provides some decent mainstream media coverage, as we see here with actor Willem Dafoe getting in on the tournament. Mr. Dafoe is starring in a new vampire/sci-fi movie called ‘Daybreakers‘ which releases today.